Lady Death Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Lady Death Blu-ray Movie Review

Dance with the Devil and you're sure to get burned.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 18, 2011

Is Lady Death cursed? Probably not, but superstitious souls might be prone to think so. Lady Death’s co-creator Steven Hughes was barely 46 when he died of cancer, but even before his untimely demise the character's publishing history was fraught with disarray. Lady Death's first home, Eternity Comics, lasted a good deal less time than its optimistic name might imply, namely just a couple of years, and soon Hughes and co- creator Brian Pulido were scouting for new digs. Shortly thereafter, their relief at finding those digs was short-lived when the comic book imprint they helped to put on the map, Chaos! Comics, went bankrupt. Right before Chaos! went under, rights for Lady Death were sold to CrossGen, another comic book publisher which went belly up within months after publishing its first Lady Death outing (amidst a rather unseemly scandal which became fodder for much Comic-Con chatter). CrossGen’s demise led to Lady Death’s ownership being transferred back to Pulido (Hughes had sadly died in the interim), along with Avatar Press, and as of this writing, anyway, both are still among the living. But then we move from the publishing world to the animation world and a whole new set of mishaps arises. In 2004 an American production company known as ADV Films (for A.D. Vision) released an animated version of Lady Death, premiering the feature at 2004’s Comic-Con. The horrified shrieks of fans and other proto-geeks (I mean that in the nicest way possible, believe me) should have been the warning siren for ADV, but someone must not have been listening, for as with so many other entities that have been “touched” by Lady Death, the company folded fairly quickly after the release of the film. It’s really rather odd, as the character herself has become something of a modern icon, at least for libidinous young males who wouldn’t mind being “touched” by her, no matter what the hideous consequences. The fact is, while Lady Death: The Movie leaves a lot to be desired, it’s not all bad, and in fact manages to squeeze at least a little of the comic book’s peculiar charm into its fairly brief running time.

Let’s get a couple of things out of the way right off the bat, especially for diehard (no pun intended) Lady Death fans. Is Lady Death: The Movie a masterpiece? Umm. . .no. Is it flawed? Undoubtedly. But you know what? It’s also strangely, goofily enjoyable in its own limited way. The film is hobbled by being too short for its own good and therefore probably too condensed for either those who love every jot and tittle (so to speak) of Lady Death as well as those who wouldn’t know the scantily clad daughter of Lucifer from the Devil himself. But if divorced from the franchise—never a good sign, I’ll admit—Lady Death has a certain entertainment value and some interesting, if underdeveloped, animation ideas wafting through its admittedly slight bones.

After a brief prelude where we see Lady Death and her netherworld minions marching on Lucifer’s bastion, Lady Death: The Movie travels back in time to give us our anti-heroine’s origin story. We’re in Medieval Sweden (who knew that was the center of diabolic happenings), where a supposed holy man named Matthias is attempting to recruit “souls” for a Crusade. Matthias is in actuality Lucifer himself and what he’s recruiting souls for is something a good deal more nefarious than merely attempting to take back the Holy Land. A local Priest seems to know who Matthias’ alter (altar?) ego is, and vows to fight the demonic presence. Meanwhile a lovely young woman named Hope is having a grassy assignation with her erstwhile boyfriend Niccolo. Niccolo has decided to leave his studies in Uppsala in favor of spending his life with Hope, despite the fact that he’s sure Hope’s father won’t approve. Guess who Hope’s Daddy turns out to be? That’s right—Matthias, who makes off with the young man while denigrating Hope for not obeying his dictum that she stay in his castle.

A mammoth fight between, well, Good and Evil ensues, leading to a conflagration which wipes out all sorts of townspeople as well as relegating Lucifer and his captive souls back to where they belong, namely Hell. The Priest manages to survive, as does Hope, which immediately engenders suspicions on the Priest’s part. Why should this virginal blonde not have succumbed to the fiery explosions which destroyed her father’s castle? The obvious conclusion: she’s a witch. Despite Hope’s protestations, to the contrary, she’s consigned to a fate worse than death, or a least a fate that’s really horrible, followed by death: burning at the stake. As she awaits her death, chained in a prison tower, she visited by her father’s Court Jester, Pagan, an odd little sprite who offers her absolution (of the damned kind) if she will simply do her father’s will. Hope of course refuses. That is, at least, until she’s nearly consumed by flames, at which point she decides maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all to reunite with Daddy in the underworld. Her distressed call to the powers of darkness bring forth two demons who carry her spirit (as well as her badly charred body) back to Hell, and that’s where the real fun begins.

Hope realizes Dad is kind of despicable in his demonic form, and soon she’s exiled due to her bad attitude. She hooks up with Asmodeus, another former Devil’s henchman who’s seen the light (so to speak) and wants to help Hope claim Hell for herself. Under Asmodeus’ tutelage, Hope quickly (too quickly, fans of this franchise would probably argue) transforms into Lady Death, a bustier and garter clad goddess with a magical sword and kick-ass powers, ready to teach Daddy who the real Hellion is.

Lady Death: The Movie zooms through so much information in such a brief amount of time that it never really has any drama or suspense. It’s anecdotal and incredibly violent in brief spurts (of blood, that is), but there’s never really any sense of danger or real characterization here. The Devil is kind of fun, a mammoth, beet red figure who comes off kind of like a petulant jock who can’t quite believe he’s not the Big Man on Campus anymore. Pagan is a goofball and fitfully funny. But Lady Death herself never really rises to the iconic levels she should, and that’s probably the major flaw of this outing.

The animation style here is quite interesting, if somewhat schizophrenic. Aspects of this feature are incredibly well realized, with huge Gothic backgrounds that evoke the hellish renderings of Heironymous Bosch or Pieter Brueghel the Younger. Several of the major characters are very well drawn, with The Devil being the standout of the bunch. But in other ways, this is an extremely slapdash affair, with backgrounds and group scenes that seem to have been sketched and never completed. One hates to think about what might have happened to the animation team as they were attempting to finish Lady Death. That curse may in fact be real.

Lady Death Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Lady Death: The Movie is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of AEsir Holdings (which I assume is the corporate remains of ADV) with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Speaking strictly from a transfer perspective, this is an extremely solid looking Blu-ray, with few if any compression artifacts, and a bold, colorful and very sharp looking image. What may turn off some videophiles is the weird split in the animation styles mentioned above. While some aspects of this piece are fantastic looking, with gorgeously saturated hues and a brilliant palette, great line detail and excellent, fluid motion, other aspects are lifeless, shoddy and just drab looking. It's almost as if two teams were working on this feature, one which concentrated on the main characters and some of the more ornate backgrounds, and another which focused on wider vistas and group scenes. If you can get used to this disparity, at least half of this feature looks fantastic. The other half: well, not so much.

Lady Death Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Lady Death: The Movie features two lossless audio options, both DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes, one in English and the other in German. The mixes on both of these tracks is virtually identical and I must say it's kind of fun to see these hellish characters spouting the guttural sounds of German. But the English track is filled with excellent fidelity and a rather surprising amount of surround activity. The film has some fantastic sound effects which whip around the soundfield with alacrity, and the action sequences have some very good discrete channelization. Voice work is very good to excellent throughout this enterprise, and the underscore is also well above average. Both some explosions as well as fight scenes provide some great LFE as well.

Lady Death Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Visions of Hell: Hellscapes (HD; 5:00) is an assortment of backgrounds and characters from the film.
• Visions of Hell: Minions (HD; 5:02) shows various stages of character design.
• Animating Death (SD; 21:20) is a surprisingly interesting featurette delineating the history of the transfer of the Lady Death franchise to animation.
• Director's Commentary features Andrew Orjuela, along with Rod Peters, Senior Marketing Manager and Mark Williams, Executive in Charge of Production. This is a little on the chatty side, but includes some decent information about Orjuela's approach to adapting the franchise for the screen. Orjuela's hopes for a sequel are evidently misplaced.

Lady Death Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm no doubt not going to engender the approbation of longtime Lady Death fans with my conclusion about this film, but while it can't be denied this film has issues galore, its at least fitfully fascinating design aesthetic and some fun characterizations help to make up for its shortcomings. Lady Death: The Movie would have been much better had it been at least a bit longer, allowing for more character development, and it certainly could have benefited from a more uniform animation style. But on the whole, there's something kind of intriguing in these results, even if they're not "classic" Lady Death. If you're a fan of the comic book character and despise this film, just write off the ravings of this reviewer as the obviously desperate attempts of a writer hoping against hope (or Hope) not to be sucked into a dreaded curse. Recommended.